Various and Sundry were Thoughtful, This Morning

[lagilman]

Some interesting exchanges on Twitter yesterday, and reading various updates around the social networks, plus an impromptu dramatic rereading of "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock" this morning over coffee, and my brain is being all Thoughtful 'n shit.

And the end result?  I am very thankful that, for all the crap life has handed me and all the crap I've handed myself, that I was also given a sense of humor AND developed a sense of perspective about All The Crap. Because otherwise, it would be really easy to become bitter and angry and afraid, and bitter and angry and afraid are terrible ways to spend your life.

Especially since we get no points, style or otherwise, for anger, and few of us are really witty enough to get points for bitterness, no matter what we want to believe.  And fear, while it keeps you from being eaten, can also keep you from everything else.


(That does not mean, however, that I do not have occasional, utterly enjoyable, wallows in bitterness. Also, envy, fear, jealousy, and general fuckitallity. Because, yanno: human. And it adds piquancy to the rest of life, in small doses, and that informs the writing, eventually. Then I get out of the wallow, dry myself off, and go on. )

Comments

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

There are a couple of people in town who have become really, really bitter as they've got into their 50s. And I don't want to end up like that. Anger's sometimes a good thing, but often not. And fear needs to be pushed through and occasionally hidden from - under the bed.

[lagilman]

Yeah. None of them are bad thing, in moderation. But like pepper, too much can ruin the human stew. (so to metaphor)

I was talking about a variant of this with my mom this weekend, and I thought that the difference between people who get terminally stuck in bitterness and people who don't may really be as simple as humor. Or maybe, whimsy? Because when something strikes you as being funny, even darkly funny, it's hard to go back to the same level of bitter.

A thought, still under construction.

[sfmarty.livejournal.com]

check out google.com today. A tribute to Gorey.